HTC Desire Vodafone 500mb Fair Usage Policy

gjchester

ZootHornRollo wrote: »

i am sure they knew what they were doing. it'll all have been calculated that the income for the customers who got away will be more than made up for by the increasing use of data and the resulting £5 charges from the low data cap.

Inertia will have meat most people will have just got annoyed but put up with it. The number who will have left will be low, hundreds maybe thousands at the most. Absolutly nothing but a drop in the ocean to a big company like Vodafone.

I also suspect the charge is not so much to get more money from people, but rather aimed at making people use data less, there are more and more smartphones and capacity is limited. Penailising the heavy users will cause them to cut back on use.

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

gjchester wrote: »

Inertia will have meat most people will have just got annoyed but put up with it. The number who will have left will be low, hundreds maybe thousands at the most. Absolutly nothing but a drop in the ocean to a big company like Vodafone.

I also suspect the charge is not so much to get more money from people, but rather aimed at making people use data less, there are more and more smartphones and capacity is limited. Penailising the heavy users will cause them to cut back on use.

Vodafone or any network have no business pedalling data hungry smart-phones if their networks cannot cope with the demand.

gjchester

A_Flock_Of_Sheep wrote: »

Vodafone or any network have no business pedalling data hungry smart-phones if their networks cannot cope with the demand.

Your point is?

My car can (or could when new) do 115MPH top speed, but I'm limited to 70 on the roads. Does that mean Fiat should not have sold it in the UK just because we have a speed limit?

Vodafone is in the business of selling phones and airtime, they are trying to make it so data is available at a reasonalbe cost to all, and this is their way give subscribers an allowance and charge if you go over it to moderate use. Go back a few years and you'd have been looking at £5 a megabyte.

Unfortunatly (and as usual) it's the selfish minority that have been using the phones all the time as a modems that have meant these restrictions. It's no different to home broadband, where the people leeching files 24 hours a day meant traffic shaping had to come in. The actions of the minority negativly affect the majority, and something has to be done.

You could say that people should not be buying data heavy smartphones if they are unwilling to pay a data bill on top of the phone useage.

Data is not free, but the vast majority would not have wanted to see their bills rise to subsidise the few people who abuse the system.

ZootHornRollo

gjchester wrote: »

Your point is?

My car can (or could when new) do 115MPH top speed, but I'm limited to 70 on the roads. Does that mean Fiat should not have sold it in the UK just because we have a speed limit?

you bought the car knowing the speed limit (i assume you have a licence)

no such licence is required for a smartphone nor is any form of prior 'training'. Most users who have smartphones have no idea how much data they use. You will find questions on many forums from such users surprised that their phones are consuming data when they are not actively using them (in the middle of the night!)

Modern smartphones are designed from the ground up to be constantly connected to the web. They are pushed as multimedia devices to be used for social networking, instant messaging, youtube and streaming music and as such were sold with 'unlimited' data packages, pushed by salespersons reassuring punters it would only be those taking the mick that got busted. That changed.

I'm sure in the near future as we all get used to the idea that data is going to cost (again) we will see smartphones advertised that consume less data (by using features such as 'light' browsers eg. Opera Mini) just as we have cars that are sold on there fuel consumption.

gjchester

ZootHornRollo wrote: »

you bought the car knowing the speed limit (i assume you have a licence)

And people buy smart phones with a fair use limit. It's been on all advertising albeit in the small print for years since the ASA said they had to put it in place.

Yes it was sold as unlimited but it was always quantified there was a 500mb limit.

karatedragon

gjchester wrote: »

And people buy smart phones with a fair use limit. It's been on all advertising albeit in the small print for years since the ASA said they had to put it in place.

Yes it was sold as unlimited but it was always quantified there was a 500mb limit.

If it was sold as unlimited but there was a limit then it was mis-sold. It is high time this false advertising was outlawed with fines of tens of thousands imposed on flouters.

gjchester

karatedragon wrote: »

If it was sold as unlimited but there was a limit then it was mis-sold. It is high time this false advertising was outlawed with fines of tens of thousands imposed on flouters.

As I've said before I agree, but the ASA don't so they can continue this marketing. The ASA argument is that as most people never hit the limit it is effectivly unlimited to them.

I don't agree but the ASA ruling stands and as they would be the ones fining the rule breakers it's not going to happen.

If you want to log a complaint use this link

http://www.asa.org.uk/Complaints-and-ASA-action/Dealing-with-complaints.aspx


But you may want to read this adjudicatin

http://www.asa.org.uk/Complaints-and-ASA-action/Adjudications/2009/12/Vodafone-Ltd/TF_ADJ_47835.aspx

which is the last time the term unlimited and 500MB was queried. You'll also note is was in December 2009 and that the 500MB limit FUP was already in place then, if a salesman sold you unlimited internet after that (and probably before you'd need to track back to when the small print came in) then you may have a case you were mis sold by the salesman but not by Vodafone who were making the FUP limit known.

And for clarity it's not just Vodafone who have been before the ASA, all the mobile networks have been has similar cases from time to time.

Flodd

gjchester wrote: »

I also suspect the charge is not so much to get more money from people, but rather aimed at making people use data less, there are more and more smartphones and capacity is limited. Penailising the heavy users will cause them to cut back on use.

I suspect you may be wrong, vodafone have no objection to the amount of data you use as long as you pay for it, the recent comms from Colao around the end of 'free-ism' and the new 'flexible' data plans would indicate exactly what their position is.

As for this being a commercial desicion, once they started to let people terminate mid-contract it became anything but.

Flodd

Is this a change of plan or have electric pig got it wrong?

http://electricpig.co.uk/2010/10/01/vodafone-unlimited-plans-canned-know-your-limits/?

"The Vodafone plans will only take affect for new customers. If you’ve currently got a Vodafone Unlimited deal it’ll continue."

Foxtbh

A_Flock_Of_Sheep wrote: »

Vodafone or any network have no business pedalling data hungry smart-phones if their networks cannot cope with the demand.

Completely agree.

It's not like the broadband situation where people going way over limits are doing so by downloading excesively huge amounts of stuff.

Most of us are just using our phones normally in the way they were designed. 20 minutes of youtube on the higher quality setting uses hundreds of mb alone, for example!

Why sell devices preloaded with these applications if you penalise users for actually using them?